I never liked the hackintosh route. You're always worrying if something is going to break and it will never work perfectly well. It's a great idea for those who like to tinker, but if someone wants the simplicity of OS X, it's really the wrong way to go about it.

alright so how much 'everyday' performance upgrade should i expect with an SSD (vetex 3) and an 8gb ram kit??

i'm mainly just launching a whole bunch of windows for school and browsing needs

i make pretty good use of the 'Spaces' to have all the programs i need open so i can just tab into the appropriate space

is the dual core i5 the limiting factor in my setup?

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No, that CPU is way more than enough for what you need, and definitely faster than your desktop. You'll notice apps load faster with the SSD, and you can have more open at once with the extra RAM. Not sure what sorts of slowdowns in performance you are having at the moment though, so the RAM may not even be beneficial.

No, that CPU is way more than enough for what you need, and definitely faster than your desktop. You'll notice apps load faster with the SSD, and you can have more open at once with the extra RAM. Not sure what sorts of slowdowns in performance you are having at the moment though, so the RAM may not even be beneficial.

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honestly, i dont know why its slow either
i have vmware fusion open, word, tons of tabs in chrome,

honestly, i dont know why its slow either
i have vmware fusion open, word, tons of tabs in chrome,

sometimes it just seems to freeze up for a few secs...

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Ah, there it is. VMware is your problem. Try getting 8GB RAM, and that should solve your problems. VMs are memory hungry little beasts. Also, to optimize performance, it's best to only give the VM about 1GB RAM and 1 or 2 cores (it sees yours as 4 because of hyperthreading). If you add the 8GB, you could up it to 2GB for the VM, and you would likely see better performance from both sides of the system.

even tho the i5 MBP is technically faster than my current PC desktop (e6600 c2d, 2GB ram), i don't know if its fast enough for me,

will replacing the hdd w/ an SSD and 8gb ram kit make it snappier??

i'm thinking of scrapping my current PC and just hooking this MBP up to my monitor when i get home....

arg, i wish i had more monies lol

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Depend on your mobo and graphic card most of the time.

if those two component fit the requirement, then I would suggest hackintosh route, since its just as easy as installing os x on a MBP, beside need to take a extra step on installation. After that it should work exactly like what you have on a Mac Machine without issues at all.

If you are lazy to do little bit of research and just want a mac without budget in mind, get a MBP and use it as a desktop.

But really, at the end is up to what you want to do with it...

Just for XCode like me, Hackintosh is a better choice.
Otherwise MBP should be better if you spend more time on mac than other OS.

Or if you just want something shiny and made by apple, Mac is the way to go. J/K...

If you use VMs that much, why not just go the Windows 7 route? It would probably be more stable than a hackintosh.

Try adjusting the settings in VM ware and ram allocations, having more RAM onboard will definitely make VMware snappier. Allocate at least 2gb to windows vm. I have 8gb in mine, I give windows half, leaving the other half for OS X

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